apathy

partners in insomnia

Shinsou tugs at his tie, scowling at the rat-bear-thing that had introduced himself as the principal. He's not the only twitchy one in the auditorium, which is filled nearly to the brim with every new freshman—minus the hero class A-1. There had been plenty mutters and scoffs from the people around him about them thinking they were better than the rest when all of them had realized that they weren't there. And being cooped up in this enclosed space for over thirty minutes now has not helped in the least. The principal can talk. 

As if answering the prayers of the students, a door slides open near the front of the auditorium, stopping Nedzu in the middle of a sentence. A student steps in, looking dead tired, with an All Might umbrella in his hand and resting on his shoulder. His bushy green hair looks familiar to Shinsou, but he can't exactly remember why. Seemingly ignoring the deafening silence that has filled the auditorium, the boy slides the door shut and meanders through the aisles until he comes to stand by the group that makes up Shinsou's Gen-Ed class. 

Nedzu keeps talking after a pause, apologizing for going on a tangent, and Shinsou moves his head to look at the boy around a classmate. He reaches up to reclip a barrette holding back his bangs and Shinsou finally remembers where he's seen him. The attempted robbery at Jotun's convenience store. Shinsou has no clue why this guy who took down two robbers so easily isn't in the hero classes, but maybe he—what was his name??? Mido-something—is like Shinsou, with a quirk unsuited for beating robots or solving puzzles. Mido glances his way and Shinsou looks back to Nedzu, who is finally wrapping up his speech.

"And remember!" He chirps. "PLUS ULTRA!"

With that the classes break up, going to their separate homerooms.

Shinsou notices pretty quickly that there's a space around Mido, like no one wants to get close. For a moment anger flares up on his behalf, but Shinsou squashes it down. He doesn't know anything about this guy, and he can't afford to be angry on someone else's behalf. He has plenty to be angry about on his own, and he can't let anything distract him from getting into the hero course.

Besides, Mido doesn't look like the space between him and the other kids bothers him at all. He definitely notices, though, because the crowd is actively parting for him, full of whispers. Shinsou hears someone mutter that he looks like some kind of delinquent but he just thinks Mido looks tired.

As an insomniac himself, Shinsou relates.

Mido ends up sitting in front of Shinsou's own back corner desk. The people around them are still whispering, and he hears a girl snicker and suggest in a stage whisper that maybe the two of them are related. Y'know, because of the eyebags? Shinsou controls himself well enough that his face just twitches, and Mido puts his head down on his folded arms.

Their homeroom teacher, pro hero Snipe of all people, steps into the room holding a pile of papers and the talking cuts off. He introduces himself, redundantly because most people know who he is, and passes what he explains to be assessment tests around. He leaves Shinsou and Mido for last, and after he hands them their tests, stays by Mido's desk.

"Midoriya, right?" Snipe asks quietly. So that's what his name was. "The teachers noticed that your emergency contact on your forms is the number for our local police station?"

"Yeah." Midoriya confirms, without lifting his head. Snipe pauses, and though the mask isn't giving anything away, Shinsou and Midoriya can both tell he's not sure where to go from there. Midoriya stares at him, then sighs. "Call it and ask for Tsukauchi."

It's clear by now that the entire class is listening into this conversation, but Midoriya continues to stare down Snipe until he pulls a phone from under his poncho. There's suffocating silence blanketing the room as Snipe dials the number, putting the phone to his ear.

"I'm calling for Tsukauchi, on behalf of Izuku Midoriya?" He says hesitantly. There's a low mummer, and then someone's at the phone talking loud enough that Shinsou can hear him clearly. Snipe, startled, has to pull the phone away from his ear.

"IT'S THE FIRST DAY, WHAT HAS HE DONE NOW?!" The person—well, not wails exactly, but it's a close thing. Midoriya doesn't seem surprised with the reaction and Snipe hurriedly brings the phone back up.

"No, we were just making sure this was the right number for the emergency contact." He assures. There's a lull in the yelling, then another sentence, and Snipe hesitantly holds out the phone, tapping the speaker button. The class stares in bewilderment.

"—NSA. SANSA HE'S FINE SIT BACK DOWN—"

"Tsukauchi, you're yelling." Midoriya pipes up, immediately hushing the detective on the other side.

"Midoriya, please stop giving us heart attacks. Please." Tsukauchi says, begs really. "Sansa stop—Midoriya is fine. I don't care, you can't put him in a holding cell, go back to your desk—"

"I'm in the middle of class." Midoriya announces over the bickering. "Bye."

Then he reaches out and hangs up on them. The class sits quietly for a moment, then Midoriya sits up and starts working on his assessment. After a moment, Snipe goes back to the front of the room and the class follows Midoriya's lead with the test.

Lunch comes faster than Shinsou realizes and while they don't sit together he does end up sitting at the same, otherwise empty, table as Midoriya. Shinsou still has no intention of making friends, and Midoriya doesn't seem that hard pressed to deal with their classmates either. They eat in silence that day and the next and the next.

On the third day, an alarm shrieks through the lunchroom. Even when the rest of the students begin to panic and run to get out, Midoriya stays indifferent.

"Are you not going to leave?" Shinsou looks up to ask. It's the first time they've actually spoken to or at each other. Midoriya shrugs.

"If it's a security breach, we're in danger anyway." He says, just loud enough to be heard over the shouting. "Might as well finish lunch."

Shinsou can't really find a good reason to argue, so he stays seated too. Eventually a hero student floats into the air and yells for everyone to calm down, explaining that it's just the press and scolding everyone for reacting as they have. Shinsou catches him looking at his and Midoriya's table with a little bit of pride when he starts coming down. Apparently hero students are impressed by shows of indifference, who knew?

Midoriya caps his lunch and stands up as soon as everything has calmed down.

"See you in class." He says as a goodbye. Shinsou watches him leave the cafeteria and hums to himself. Midoriya isn't so bad, he supposes.